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Greetings, fellow supporters of Kenny Zulu Whitmore. We apologize that it has been so long since we have given you all an update on our beloved brother and comrade Zulu, but we were bound by legal counsel from shining the light on our warrior brother’s plight. Here we are nevertheless, with some amazing news about our Brother Zulu. On Nov. 16, 2015, Zulu, who was then the prisoner longest held in solitary confinement after Albert Woodfox, was released to general population.

A man who has spent 35 years in solitary confinement – one of the longest stints in a U.S. prison – may soon be released into the general inmate population. In an exclusive interview outside the gates of the largest prison in America, Warden Burl Cain of the Louisiana State Penitentiary said he is prepared to take Kenny “Zulu” Whitmore out of what is known as closed cell restriction if the inmate, who is 59 years old, no longer represents a safety risk.

Most of us know of the famed Angola 3, Black Panthers who organized a real branch of the Black Panther Party in the infamous Angola Prison in Louisiana. Robert King Wilkinson, the late Herman Hook Wallace and Albert Woodfox taught other men there about Black History, politics and Black Panther history. One such man is Kenny “Zulu” Whitmore. Zulu has spent a total of 35 years in solitary confinement, principally for his political beliefs.

This morning we lost without a doubt the biggest, bravest and brashest personality in the political prisoner world. On Oct. 4, 2013, Herman Wallace, an icon of the modern prison reform movement and an innocent man, died a free man after spending an unimaginable 41 years in solitary confinement. Herman spent the last four decades of his life fighting against all that is unjust in the criminal justice system, making international the inhuman plight that is long term solitary confinement and struggling to prove that he was an innocent man.

We have entered many battles as comrades, won some, lost a few, but have survived them all. But from this most recent battle that we have undertaken, one of us will not return. The Ancestors have made the call to come home to our beloved senior comrade. What can we do but heed their call? Even if you are late, the Black Panther Party will meet you at that gate, and when you get home, roam, old Panther, roam.

Prison is a lonely, dark, cruel reality where you immediately become trapped in a time warp on one of the many modern day plantations that have sprung up like trees across America. In 2008, shortly after Hurricane Gustav ripped through several of Louisiana’s 64 parishes, a brutal sexual assault was being carried out by a sadistic corrections officer. I will conduct a sit-down with the victim of that violent act.

I say this is torture: Being held in this solitary confinement cage where I can stand in the middle of the floor, extend my arms, and touch both walls. For the last 34 years, 23 hours a day is by definition torture. They say it is because of my political education, affiliation with the Angola 3 – Shaka, King and Chairman Hooks – and my ties to the Black Panther Party.

Revered political prisoner Kenny Zulu Whitmore writes: “All of my pro-se litigation over the years has been met with a one-word decision, ‘Denied,’ never giving me a legal reason or an arguable appeal. Now I finally have legal representation, and I am launching my campaign to raise funds for my legal defense.

Brother Hugo, you inspire me to do better. After I read your letter to your comrade Terry, you sent me into a thinking and reflecting mode. I am a 24-year-old Afrikan revolutionary fighter, and I have been going through a transformative process using the Malcolm self-evolvement way.

Blacks and Latinos in the United States have long complained of police harassment and racial profiling, but no one paid much attention until July 16 this year, when the Cambridge, Massachusetts, police arrested Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates at his home on a “disorderly conduct” charge – read for being an uppity Negro or forgetting his place.

Since being held in prison, I have lost nearly two generations of family members, starting with the devastating loss of my mother in January 1976. Grieving alone was hard enough; I also had to endure beatings by prison guards, racial slurs, death threats and psychological torture.